Donald Trump praised Nigel Farage ahead of a meeting in the US with Sir Keir Starmer.

The Republican presidential candidate met the Prime Minister at Trump Tower in New York for talks ahead of November’s US election.

Speaking ahead of the meeting, Mr Trump appeared to suggest Reform leader Mr Farage should have won more seats at the UK’s election in July.

He said: “I think Nigel is great, I’ve known him for a long time. He had a great election too, picked up a lot of seats, more seats than he was allowed to have actually.

“They acknowledged that he won but for some reason you have a strange system over there, you might win them but you don’t get them.”

Sir Keir’s meeting with Mr Trump had the potential to be diplomatically awkward because of former comments made by him and Foreign Secretary David Lammy, who also attended, about the Republican presidential candidate.

Mr Lammy called Mr Trump a “racist KKK and Nazi sympathiser” in 2017 and promised to protest on the streets if he visited the UK.

Speaking at a press conference before they met, Mr Trump said he thought Sir Keir was “very nice”.

He said: “I actually think he’s very nice. He ran a great race, he did very well, it’s very early, he’s very popular.”

Sir Keir, who was not able to schedule a similar appointment with Democratic candidate and vice president Kamala Harris, said he wanted to meet Mr Trump face to face because “I’m a great believer in personal relationships on the world stage”.

Ahead of the meeting, the PM said: “I’ve said a number of times, I want to meet both candidates.

“We’ve now got the opportunity to meet Trump, which is good. Obviously, I still want to speak to Harris as well.

“It’ll be really to establish a relationship between the two of us. I’m a great believer in personal relations on the international stage.

“I think it really matters that you know who your counterpart is in any given country, and know them personally, get to know them face to face.”